RORO VILLAGE, India (AP) — Asbestos waste spills in a gray gash down the flank of a lush green hill above tribal villages in eastern India. Three decades after the mines were abandoned, nothing has been done to remove the enormous, hazardous piles of broken rocks and powdery dust left behind.

In Roro Village and other settlements below, people who never worked in the mines are dying of lung disease. Yet in a country that treats asbestos as a savior that provides cheap building materials for the poor, no one knows the true number and few care to ask.

“I feel weak, drained all the time,” Baleman Sundi gasped, pushing the words out before she lost her breath. “But I must work.” The 65-year-old paused, inhaled. “I don’t have a choice.” Another gasp. “I have to eat.”

Sundi and 17 others from a clutch of impoverished villages near the abandoned hilltop mines were diagnosed in 2012 with asbestosis, a fatal lung disease. One has since died. Tens of thousands more remain untested and at risk. Asbestos makes up as much as 14.3 percent of the soil around Roro Village, analysis of samples gathered by The Associated Press showed.

The 17 surviving patients are suing in the country’s environmental court for cleanup, compensation and a fund for future victims. If they win, the case would set precedents for workplace safety and corporate liability, both often ignored in India.

Neither the government nor the Indian company that ran the mines from 1963 to 1983 has made any move to clean up the estimated 700,000 tons of asbestos tailings and debris left scattered across several kilometers (miles) of hilly mining area.

“The company had followed all rules and procedures for closure of a mine and had complied with the provisions of the law, as in force in 1983,” a spokesman for Hyderabad Asbestos Cement Products Ltd., now known as HIL Ltd., told AP.

India placed a moratorium on asbestos mining in 1986, acknowledging it was hazardous to miners. But that was the government’s last decision curtailing the spread of asbestos. It has since embraced the mineral as a cheap building material. Today, India is the world’s fastest-growing market for asbestos.

India keeps no statistics on how many people have been sickened or died from exposure to asbestos, which industry and many government officials insist is safe when mixed with cement.

Western medical experts strongly disagree.

The World Health Organization and more than 50 countries, including the U.S. and all of Europe, say it should be banned in all forms. Asbestos fibers lodge in the lungs and cause many diseases. The International Labor Organization estimates 100,000 people die every year from workplace exposure.

In this Sept. 11, 2014 photo, Kalyan Bansingh, left, main plaintiff in a case suing the country’ …

Vijay, lowering his head, attempted a half-smile.

“It’s heartbreaking. Kids are playing on it. People are stirring it up. You don’t have to inhale much to put a cap on your life,” said Richard Fuller of the Blacksmith Institute, a New York-based watchdog that estimates 50,000 people could be at risk.

Hydrabad Asbestos employed about 1,500 people in the Roro asbestos mines in Jharkhand state.

The company said it followed strict health and safety policies, and “no health or environmental damage was reported during the mine operations.” It did not say if it sent anyone to check on the villagers’ health after the mines closed. Villagers told the AP they were never invited for a company-sponsored checkup after 1983.

The fact that Sundi and the other plaintiffs had the opportunity for a diagnosis was rare. Like most living near Roro Hill, they cannot read or write.

In this Sept. 11, 2014 photo, herds of cattle, goats and sheep walk over asbestos sediments as they …

“The idea that the environment, something that has always provided and been taken for granted, could be causing them harm is a notion that just doesn’t occur to them,” said T.K. Joshi, a doctor who heads India’s only university department specializing in occupational health. “And unfortunately, most Indian doctors are not trained to ask the right questions.”

Activists, doctors and lawyers have described an almost Kafkaesque effort to hold the government and company accountable over the past decade.

At the time the mines were open, Jharkhand state didn’t even exist. The land was part of a wider Bihar state, with its capital and paperwork held in a different city. Neither state has been able to produce the 30-year-old documents about the mine’s closure.

“As far as environmental issues are concerned, we have already dealt with it,” said Jharkhand’s Mining Secretary Arun, who uses only one name.

In 2012, an activist group selected 150 Roro-area villagers for chest X-rays. The plates were examined by Dr. V. Murlidhar, an occupational health specialist, who confirmed 18 had the tell-tale honeycomb pattern that denotes asbestosis.

What we need to learn from history, according to a new study in the Annals of Global Health

Challenges to global health can evolve from policies and decisions that take years or decades to unfold. An article in the current issue of the Annals of Global Health describes the current state of asbestos use worldwide, a story that began over 100 years ago, and the real and contrived controversies regarding asbestos.

At the peak of asbestos use in 1972 in the United States, more than 775,000 tons of asbestos were used, much of it by the construction trades and shipbuilding industry, in addition to the manufacturing of many consumer products. As the health risks associated with asbestos have become evident, more than 50 countries have banned asbestos, although India and the United States have not.

As investigators Arthur L. Frank, MD, PhD, Drexel University School of Public Health, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, and T.K. Joshi, MBBS, MS (Surgery), Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health, Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi, India, relate, “Unfortunately, as the developed world was banning or constricting the use of asbestos, the developing world was greatly increasing its use of this toxic material. Major producers such as Russia, Kazakhstan, China, and Brazil continue to produce and export asbestos to countries around the world, especially to low- and middle-income countries that too often have weak or nonexistent occupational and environmental regulations.” They note that India produces little asbestos, but has become a major importer with exponential growth in manufacture of asbestos cement and pipes.

Asbestos minerals are divided into two groups, amphibole and serpentine, based on their chemistry and fiber morphology. The amphibole group includes crocidolite, amosite, tremolite, actinolite, and anthophyllite asbestos. The serpentine group is comprised solely of chrysotile asbestos, and it accounts for some 90% to 95% of all the asbestos used worldwide.

Two groups of diseases are associated with exposures to asbestos: nonmalignant diseases, which can be fatal, and cancer. The nonmalignant diseases associated with exposure to asbestos include asbestos warts, benign asbestotic pleural effusion, and asbestosis.

The now disproven belief that chrysotile asbestos is safe and the actions of the governments of Canada and India to support asbestos production in the face of strong epidemiological data show that this is not a strictly science-driven issue. Canada has recently had a turnabout and will likely exit the asbestos business, but India remains recalcitrant.

Dr. Frank and Dr. Joshi report on how the global spread of asbestos is changing but that there are still examples of flawed science being used to justify continued use. They suggest that, because of economic issues for asbestos producers, there “are far more insidious actions that follow a pattern first established by the tobacco industry in hiring public relations firms to obfuscate the scientific issues so that tobacco could still be sold…Similarly, the asbestos industry adopted the view that a public relations campaign was needed to quash the rising concerns about its health hazards.”

The authors caution that eventually the truths regarding asbestos exposure and its true hazards will be recognized and acted upon, but only after economic forces are overcome.

“These are huge numbers. We’re talking about millions of people,” Shankar said. “So there is a lot of latent demand.”

Yet there are some poor Indians trying to keep asbestos out of their communities, even as the government supports the industry by lowering import duties and using asbestos in construction of subsidized housing.

“People outside of India, they must be wondering what kind of fools we are,” said Ajit Kumar Singh from the Indian Red Cross Society. “They don’t use it. They must wonder why we would.”

In the ancient farming village of Vaishali, in impoverished Bihar state, the first word about the dangers of asbestos came from chemistry and biology textbooks that a boy in a neighboring town brought home from school, according to villagers interviewed by The Associated Press.

A company was proposing an asbestos plant in the village of 1,500 people located about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) east of New Delhi.

The villagers worried that asbestos fibers could blow from the factory across their wheat, rice and potato fields and into their tiny mud-and-thatch homes. Their children, they said, could contract lung diseases most Indian doctors would never test for, let alone treat. Neither India nor any of its 29 states keep statistics on how many people might be affected by asbestos.

The people of Vaishali began protesting in January 2011. They objected that the structure would be closer to their homes than the legal limit of 500 meters (1,640 feet). Still, bricks were laid, temporary management offices were built and a hulking skeleton of steel beams went up across the tree-studded landscape.

The villagers circulated a petition demanding the factory be halted. But in December 2012, its permit was renewed, inciting more than 6,000 people from the region to rally on a main road, blocking traffic for 11 hours. They gave speeches and chanted “Asbestos causes cancer.”

Amid the chaos, a few dozen villagers took matters into their own hands, pulling down the partially built factory, brick by brick.

“It was a moment of desperation. No one was listening to us,” said a villager involved in the demolition, a teacher who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the company. “There was no other way for us to express our outrage.”

Within four hours, the factory and offices were demolished: bricks, beams, pipes and asbestos roofing, all torn down. The steel frame was the only remnant left standing.

“Still, we did not feel triumphant,” the teacher said. “We knew it wasn’t over.”

They were right. The company filed lawsuits, still pending, against several villagers, alleging vandalism and theft.

Durable and heat-resistant, asbestos was long a favorite insulation material in the West, but has also been used in everything from shoes and dental fillings to fireproofing sprays, brake linings and ceiling tiles.

Scientists and medical experts overwhelmingly agree that inhaling any form of asbestos can lead to deadly diseases including mesothelioma, lung cancer and asbestosis, or the scarring of the lungs. Exposure may also lead to other debilitating ailments, including asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

About 125 million people worldwide are exposed to asbestos at work each year, the WHO says. Because the disease typically takes 20 to 40 years to manifest, workers can go through their careers without realizing they are getting sick.

Dozens of countries including Japan, South Korea, Argentina, Saudi Arabia and all European Union nations have banned asbestos entirely. Others including the United States have severely curtailed its use.

Most asbestos on the world market today comes from Russia. Brazil, Kazakhstan and China also export, though some have been reviewing their positions.

Canada’s Quebec province was the world’s biggest asbestos producer for much of the 20th century. It got out of the business in 2012, after a new provincial government questioned why it was mining and exporting a material its own citizens shunned.

Asia is the biggest market. India last year imported $235 million worth of the stuff, or about half of the global trade.

The global asbestos lobby says the mineral has been unfairly maligned by Western nations that used it irresponsibly. It also says one of the six forms of asbestos is safe: chrysotile, or white asbestos, which accounts for more than 95 percent of all asbestos used since 1900, and all of what’s used today.

“Chrysotile you can eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner!” said Kanat Kapbayel of Kazakhstan’s United Minerals and a board member of the International Chrysotile Association.

Chrysotile is a serpentine mineral, meaning its fibers are curly and more flexible than the other more jagged and sharp forms called amphiboles. The lobby and its supporters say this distinction makes all the difference.

“A rigorous review of the epidemiological evidence confirms that all types of asbestos fiber are causally implicated in the development of various diseases and premature death,” the Joint Policy Committee of the Societies of Epidemiology said in a 2012 position statement.

Squeezed out of the industrialized world, the asbestos industry is trying to build up new markets and has created lobbying organizations to help it sell asbestos to poor countries, particularly in Asia, it said.

Developed nations are still reckoning with health and economic consequences from past asbestos use.

American businesses have paid out at least $1.3 billion in the largest and longest-running collection of personal injury lawsuits in U.S. legal history, according to a 2012 report by the California-based Rand research corporation. Two years ago, an Italian court sentenced two businessmen from Swiss building material maker Eternit AG to 16 years in prison for negligence leading to more than 2,000 asbestos-related deaths. Billions of dollars have been spent stripping asbestos from buildings in the U.S. and Europe.

Arun Saraf, the Indian asbestos association’s chairman, said India has learned from the West’s mistakes.

He said the lobby’s 15 member companies maintain the strictest safety standards in their factories. That includes limiting airborne dust, properly disposing of waste and insisting employees wear safety masks, gloves and protective clothing.

The vast majority of asbestos used in India is mixed with cement and poured into molds for corrugated roof sheets, wall panels or pipes. Fibers can be released when the sheets are sawed or hammered, and when wear and weather break them down. Scientists say those released fibers are just as dangerous as the raw mineral.

AP journalists who visited a working factory and a shuttered one in Bihar found both had dumped broken sheets and raw material in fields or uncovered pits within the factory premises. Workers without any safety gear were seen handling the broken sheets at both factories. The working factory was operated by Ramco Industries Ltd., while the other owned by Nibhi Industries Pvt. Ltd. was supplying materials to UAL Industries Ltd.

Saraf, who is also UAL’s managing director, said the materials left strewn across the factory grounds were meant to be pulverized and recycled into new roofing sheets, and were no more dangerous than the final product as the asbestos had already been mixed with cement.

He said Nibhi was not an association member, but “I have been informed that Nibhi workers are provided with all the personal protective equipment.”

Some employees of Ramco’s working factory said they were satisfied that asbestos was safe, and were delighted by the benefits of steady work. But several former employees of both factories said they were given masks only on inspection days, and rarely if ever had medical checkups. None was aware that going home with asbestos fibers on their clothing or hair could put their families at risk.

Ramco CEO Prem Shanker said all employees working in areas where asbestos was kept unmixed were given safety equipment and regular medical checkups that were reviewed by government authorities. “Ramco has consistently gone the extra mile to ensure a safe working environment,” he said. AP was not given permission to visit these indoor areas.

Indian customers like the asbestos sheets because they’re sturdy, heat resistant and quieter in the rain than tin or fiberglass. But most of all, they’re cheap.

“I’ve known it’s a health hazard for about 10 years, but what can we do? This is a country of poor people, and for less money they can have a roof over their heads,” Kumar said.

“These people are not aware” of the health risks, he said. But as sellers of asbestos sheets wanting to stay in business, “we’re not able to tell them much.”

The two-day asbestos conference in December was billed as scientific. But organizers said they had no new research.

One could say they’ve gone back in time to defend their products.

The Indian asbestos lobby’s website refers to 1998 WHO guidelines for controlled use of chrysotile, but skips updated WHO advice from 2007 suggesting that all asbestos be banned. The lobby also ignores the ILO’s 2006 recommendation to ban asbestos, and refers only to its 1996 suggestion of strict regulations.

When asked why the association ignored the most recent advice, its executive director, John Nicodemus, waved his hand dismissively. “The WHO is scaremongering,” he said.

Many of the speakers are regulars at asbestos conferences around the world, including in Brazil, Thailand, Malaysia, Ukraine and Indonesia.

American Robert Nolan, who heads a New York-based organization called Environmental Studies International, told the Indian delegates that “a ban is a little like a taboo in a primitive society,” and that those who ban asbestos are “not looking at the facts.”

David Bernstein, an American-born toxicologist based in Geneva, said that although chrysotile can cause disease if inhaled in large quantities or for prolonged periods, so could any tiny particle. He has published dozens of chrysotile-friendly studies and consulted for the Quebec-based Chrysotile Institute, which lost its Canadian government funding and shut down in 2012.

When asked by an audience member about funding for his research, he said some has come from chrysotile interests without elaborating on how much. A short-term study generally costs about $500,000, he said, and a long-term research project can cost up to about $4 million.

Vaishali, India — In most of Asia, asbestos is still being actively pushed as a product that benefits the poor, despite research data from various reputable health organizations concluding that it can cause serious health problems.

The International Labor Organization (ILO), World Health Organization (WHO), medical researchers, and more than 50 countries say the mineral should be banned; asbestos fibers lodge in the lungs, and cause disease. ILO estimates 100,000 people die from workplace exposure every year.

WORKING WITH ‘HAZARDOUS’ ASBESTOS (AP) — A worker covers his face with a handkerchief to serve as protection from the hazards of handling asbestos sheets at a factory in Bhojpur, Bihar, India in this Nov. 23, 2013 photo. Scientists and medical experts overwhelmingly agree that inhaling any form of asbestos can lead to deadly diseases, but the Indian asbestos lobby say the risks are overblown.

But industry executives at the 2013 asbestos conference in New Delhi said the risks are overblown.

Instead, they described their business as a form of social welfare for hundreds of thousands of impoverished Indians still living in flimsy, mud-and-thatch huts.

“We’re here not only to run our businesses, but also to serve the nation,” India’s Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers Association Director Abhaya Shankar.

Umesh Kumar, a roadside vendor in Bihar’s capital Patna (around 70 kilometers from Vaishali), has long known there are health hazards to the 3-by-1-meter (10-by-3-foot) asbestos cement sheets he sells for 600 rupees ($10) each. But he doesn’t guide customers to the 800 rupee tin or fiberglass alternatives.

“This is a country of poor people, and for less money, they can have a roof over their heads,” he said.

Yet there are some poor Indians trying to keep asbestos out of their communities.

In the farming village of Vaishali, residents became outraged by the construction of an asbestos factory in their backyard. They had learned about the dangers of asbestos from a school boy’s science textbooks, and worried that asbestos fibers would blow into their tiny thatch homes. Their children, they said, could contract lung diseases most Indian doctors would never test for, let alone treat.

Durable and heat-resistant, asbestos was long a favorite insulation material in the West.

Medical experts say inhaling any form of asbestos can lead to deadly diseases 20 to 40 years later, including lung cancer, mesothelioma, and asbestosis, or the scarring of the lungs.

Dozens of countries, including Japan, Argentina, and all European Union nations, have banned it entirely. Others, like the United States (US), have severely curtailed its use.

“All types of asbestos fiber are causally implicated in the development of various diseases and premature death,” the Societies of Epidemiology said in a 2012 position statement.

Russia now provides most asbestos in the world market. Meanwhile, rich nations are suffering health and economic consequences from past use.

American businesses have paid out at least $1.3 billion in the largest collection of personal injury lawsuits in US legal history. Billions have been spent stripping asbestos from buildings in the West.

The two-day asbestos conference in December was billed as scientific, though organizers admitted they had no new research. Many of the speakers are regulars at asbestos conferences in the developing world.

One could say they’ve gone back in time to defend asbestos.

The Indian lobby’s website refers to 1998 WHO guidelines for controlled use of chrysotile, but skips updated WHO advice from 2007, suggesting that all asbestos be banned. Its executive director, John Nicodemus, dismissed the WHO update as “scaremongering.”

India has become the world’s second largest market of asbestos as the government backed by powerful corporate lobby turns a blind eye to diseases related to the use of the hazardous chemical

Banned or restricted in more than 50 countries, white chrysotile asbestos is used in India widely. Though it is listed as a hazardous chemical not much has been done to check its use, despite awareness about deaths from asbestos-related cancers. If anything the supply has only gone up.

The figures are shocking. In India, import of asbestos rose from 253,382 tonnes in 2006 to 473,240 in 2012, a steep increase of 186 per cent in six years.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the global asbestos industry is holding a conference in New Delhi co-organised by the International Chrysotile Association and Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers Association, India. The presence of Indian government dignitaries will demonstrate which officials act as impediment to ban white chrysotile asbestos in India to safeguard public health.

Their presence will illustrate who compelled the Indian delegation to take a ridiculous stand at the United Nations Rotterdam Convention.

India opposed the listing of chrysotile asbestos under Annex III of the Rotterdam Convention at the sixth meeting of Conference of Parties on May 8 in Geneva. Substances listed under Annex III of the Convention — a global treaty to promote shared responsibilities in relation to import of hazardous chemicals — require exporting countries to advise importing countries about the toxicity of the substances so that importers can give their prior informed consent for trade. The convention does not ban or limit trade in such hazardous substances.

The Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade is aimed at helping developing countries in managing potentially hazardous chemicals imported by them.

During the fifth Conference of Parties in June 2011, the Indian delegation had agreed to the listing of chrysotile asbestos in the PIC list, but later took a U-turn.

The Indian delegation at the UN meeting belittled India’s stature by citing an admittedly tainted and grossly conflict of interest ridden scientific study that was finalised after discussions with vested corporate interests.

A letter from the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests reveals that the Indian delegation led by of Ajay Tyagi currently chairman, Central Pollution Control Board was misguided by a note of the Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals, Union Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers to misrepresent Government of India’s position on hazardous substance chrysotile asbestos at the Sixth Conference of Parties of UN’s Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade held in Switzerland.

Indian delegation’s position was inconsistent with domestic laws, which lists asbestos as a hazardous substance. Notably, ACPMA which accompanied the delegation is facing a probe by Competition Commission of India after a reference from the serious fraud investigation office

In keeping with Indian laws when the UN’s Chemical Review Committee of Rotterdam Convention recommended listing of white chrysotile asbestos as hazardous substance, it is incomprehensible as to why Indian delegation opposed its inclusion in the UN list. The only explanation appears to be the fact that the Indian delegation did not have a position independent of the asbestos industry’s position, which has covered up and denied the scientific evidence that all asbestos can cause disease and death.

Image: A view shows the operations in a mine producing white asbestos in Brazil

Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers Association has said that the chrysotile variety used in India is safe for roofing and piping.

Asbestos cement is the most -deal roofing sheets for warehouse, factory or low-cost housing, a spokesperson for the association said here.

COURT RULING

The asbestos industry had received a big boost when the Punjab High Court ruled in its favour, refusing to ban its application and use in the country, he added.

The order was delivered on February 6, 2012, by the High Court of Punjab Haryana in the Gobind Thukral and others Vs Union of India in Writ no. 21166 of 2011.

Earlier in January 2011, the Supreme Court also had refused to ban manufacturing and use of asbestos products.

Asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral found in almost two-thirds of the earth’s crust. Depending on the region, every individual breathes in about 10,000 to 15,000 asbestos fibres each day.

There is no risk in living or working under chrysotile asbestos cement roof as the fibers are bonded and completely locked-in with cement, the spokesperson said.

These products have been in use in the country for over 75 years now. They are practically ageless and maintenance-free whereas metal sheets corrode and deteriorate with age and exposure.

They are also easy-to-install, strong and durable, apart from being cost-effective for weaker sections of society.

Russia, China, Thailand, Brazil, Mexico, Ukraine and other emerging nations are among largest users of asbestos cement products, the spokesperson added.

As regards claims linking materials containing asbestos with cause health hazards, he clarified that various studies by official agencies of the Government have proven otherwise.

Issues reported in the West in the past on extensive and uncontrolled usage at that time of the blue and brown varieties of asbestos, production and usage of which has since been banned all over the world.